#2: A journey through copyright and embarrassment

As a student I have frequently relied on the use of Microsoft Word in order to create informative text documents to represent certain course material assigned by the teacher (who would later request a printed copy). I have also used Microsoft Word to incorporate graphs and visuals into my assignments, despite how Word isn't the conventional method of portraying visuals. This is a habit I picked up from my seventh grade teacher, who would frequently copy and past photos into Microsoft Word and present the word document to the class via a projector (now that I think of it, I'm not entirely sure as to why she didn't just use the PowerPoint function. Huh. Weird.)

Although this idea can't be considered new, the textbook opened me up to the possibility of using podcasts in my future classroom. This will enable my students to hear lectures relevant to the coursework while relaxing on their own time. However, I'm aware that this will not be beneficiary to non-auditory learners, so I intend to make use of the electronic whiteboard and educational games (with kahoot being one example) to give visual learners a leg up as well. Using elements of social media in my future class (such as Edmodo) will encourage my students to collaborate with one another and develop the social skills needed to cooperate with one another.

I only recently discovered the true extent to what materials could be copyrighted. Previously, for school projects I would use an array of images found on google to display on PowerPoint presentations, having no idea of the potential consequences that could have arisen from this. Now that I am aware of the legal issues associated with careless use of someone else's imagery in my presentations, I make sure to only use images that are deliberately labeled for reuse. Now that I am aware of fair use, the importance of only displaying content that is relevant to the course material has been efficiently reinforced. (For example, I now know to only display the few minutes of a movie that is directly related to the course material as opposed to showing the entire movie itself). Additionally, I am now aware of the illegality of photocopying entire textbooks, so that is another practice I will avoid altogether. In order to ensure that my students are aware of the issues of copyright infringement, I will discourage the turning in of work that does not acknowledge the producer with proper citation. Also, I will teach them how to search for images that are labeled for reuse so that they will be aware of this simple, protective practice that I -- somehow, some way -- wasn't taught until I took this course. What if someone sued me when I used a random picture of a whale for my oceanography class in high school, oh my god.

Using twitter has shown me how incorporating social media into a classroom is a great way to gauge an understanding of what your classmates are thinking. While in high school, I have genuinely lost track of the number of times that I became concerned about whether or not my perception of a concept was the same as that of my peers. I believe that seeing the views of your fellow classmates is important in the educational process because it can expand a limited idea of a concept into something greater. In some cases, it may reveal your perception as a whole to be incorrect. The use of social media is definitely something I intend on incorporating into my classroom due to the extent of which it has benefited me personally.